#but its not right to use Colon as a mirror!

[gentaroukisaragi]

[fuckyeahisawthat]

i rewatched Dune Part Two recently and one of the most striking shots for me was the one of the Fremen attacking the Sardaukar on wormback, while holding the Atreides flag.

Like, we just saw the Sardaukar forming up with their numerous flag bearers, even trying to maintain their flags raised after the nuclear detonation (in a shot that mirrored the famous "Raising the Flag in Iwo Jima" statue to me btw, nice nod to imperialism).

And then the Fremen arrive, but they're not bearing their colors, their flags, not fighting in their own names, instead it's the Atreides colors. The colors of their new, imperially appointed rulers. New pawns in the warfare between Great Houses, soldiers instead of freedom fighters. Urgh. Wish i could make gifsets.

Yeah yeah yeah it's horrifying!! You are watching a national liberation movement get successfully co-opted by a superpower and it's awful!

They did such a good job making it feel creepy and foreboding when the Atreides symbols and motifs start re-appearing in the last hour or so of the movie. The second Gurney shows up he immediately re-introduces the Atreides way of looking at the world, and it's disturbing how easily Paul falls back into thinking like that, seeing the planet and its people as tools to be used in an inter-imperial power play. (It's right after Gurney tells him about the family nukes that Paul has the signet ring out for the first time since the beginning of the second act and we're like OH NO.) This is before he drinks the Water of Life; he is already starting to think like a colonial duke again some time before he declares himself one.

After the opening montage where we see the piles of bodies being burnt, we don't see the stylized Atreides hawk symbol for most of the movie. The next time it appears is on a vault of nuclear weapons, which are never treated as anything but a curse. It's so important that Stilgar and Chani are with Paul and Gurney when they open the vault so we can see their horror at these weapons and the gleeful, casual way Gurney talks about them. Chani is also seeing an aspect of Paul that she hasn't really witnessed before--Paul, the Future of House Atreides--and she does not like it.

And then of course the whole ending battle is making the point over and over again with repeated imagery that Atreides and Harkonnens are exactly the fucking same. All the imagery from the initial Harkonnen attack on Arrakeen in Part One--which at least shows the Atreides as brave in the face of overwhelming odds--gets inverted into something that's supposed to make us shudder. That scene of Gurney hacking his way through the crowd of soldiers with someone carrying the Atreides flag behind him? Nightmarish.

All of this stuff is super important to what the movie is trying to say because it is very very easy for us to buy into the Atreides' propaganda about themselves being the good guys. If we're paying attention to what Chani tells us in the literal first 3 minutes of the first movie, we already know we should be viewing them with a bit of critical distance. And while I think there is plenty in the first movie to make us side-eye their noble image (Leto saying we will bring peace to Arrakis?? fucking yikes dude), it's easy to forget that because Leto generally seems like a good dude to the people close to him, and he dies tragically so we never get to see much of what kind of colonizer he would have become. And I think it's easy to start thinking well if only Leto the more reasonable parent had lived then things wouldn't have turned out this way.

But fucking desert power?? That was Leto's idea. This is Leto's dream being realized. The plan was always to use the Fremen as pawns in the power struggle between the Great Houses. Maybe not quite in the way that Paul does cause he definitely goes off with it, but the end result is just as much a product of Atreides imperialism as it is of Bene Gesserit religious colonialism. The Atreides aren't inherently any more noble or benevolent than the Harkonnens in their intentions, they just have better PR. But the end result is exactly the same: a pile of dead bodies being set on fire.

[hussyknee]

Why is it that white liberals who claim to be on Palestine's side can't resist shitting a load of Islamophobia to make their point? Christ is "egalitarian and kind" but the entire system of Islamic commandments and ways of life (heavily open to various interpretations) is the great boogeyman incompatible with democracy. This coming from the white supremacist settler colonial state whose entire political establishment has for fucking decades used both religious Christian and secular grounds to destabilise, bomb, genocide and colonize Muslim countries, torture and persecute Muslims, and arm and empower fundamentalist Muslim states and groups. It's your secular democracy that delivered Afghanistan into the Taliban's hands twice! Daesh exists because of you! Saudi Arabia is your bestest buddy and you're helping it genocide Yemen and Sudan right the fuck now! Palestine is being genocided because Christian Zionism wants a vassal state of Zionist Jews! Not to mention how much of the Global South's misogyny and homophobia is the result of four hundred years of white Christian colonization, and the fact that USAmerican Christian fundamentalists are even now exporting and funding the Evangelical Christianity that's driving crackdowns on women and LGBT people in Africa. Project 2025 is a bare fraction of the misery and oppression the US government has inflicted and is still inflicting on the Global South.

All of your goddamn Western history and current rightwing extremism is about Christian fundamentalism fuelling white supremacy and brutal colonization, but when you need a boogeyman it's always some cartoon in your head about a bunch of Arab men in skull caps throwing rocks at women. Fascism is colonization turned inward bitch, but not even a quarter century of spewing its rhetoric that brought you to this inevitable endpoint is enough to make you look in the fucking mirror.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again no problem 11/26/2024

i don't have a good anecdote this week, i have the flu. look at my cat

listening

ty @shinygoodrock for the rec! billy bragg's the marching song of the covert. i was startled by the british accent but briefly forgot the uk's been colonizing way longer than god's favorite country, the usa

so SO cheery and so catchy! samples When The Ants Go Marching In!

Here we come with our candy and our guns And our corporate muscle marches in behind us For freedom's just another word for nothing left to sell And if you want narcotics we can get you those as well

it reminds me a lot of this poster i have framed but not hung up yet, jesse purcell's "A.G.F.T.P.O.T.U.S.O.A. (A Gift From The People Of The United States Of America)" (getcher own print at the link through justseeds)

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reading

my favorite tinned fish newsletter is back! i like this newsletter for its dry anecdotal voice, but i coincidentally have a tin of mackerel in tomato sauce in the pantry for mackintosh name reasons. seems like the best way to have it is fairly plain with some light seasonings. the author was a senior editor at vice and has been out of work for a bit since that site's collapse, so it's good to see him back doing silly free nonsense like his tinned fish newsletter

i had Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis on hold for nearly six months so it extra hurt when i didn't particularly care for it.

like, what a premise! a beautifully written blurb that got my attention! i think i got an ad for this one on instagram. either that or it was floating around on this site.

A sharp-witted, high fantasy farce featuring killer moat squid, toxic masculinity, evil wizards and a garlic festival - all at once. Perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher, K. J. Parker and Travis Baldree. It’s bad enough waking up in a half-destroyed evil wizard’s workshop with no eyebrows, no memories, and no idea how long you have before the Dread Lord Whomever shows up to murder you horribly and then turn your skull into a goblet or something. It’s a lot worse when you realize that Dread Lord Whomever is… you. Gav isn’t really sure how he ended up with a castle full of goblins, or why he has a princess locked in a cell. All he can do is play along with his own evil plan in hopes of getting his memories back before he gets himself killed. But as he realizes that nothing – from the incredibly tasteless cloak adorned with flames to the aforementioned princess – is quite what it seems, Gav must face up to all the things the Dread Lord Gavrax has done. And he’ll have to answer the hardest question of all – who does he want to be? Dread Lord Gavrax has had better weeks.

this is a debut novel based on a friendgroup's DnD campaign, and it does show a bit. maybe you have a friend who’s freshly into improv? it gets a little wrapped up in Doing Bits. at several points i did think “i could be reading terry pratchett right now instead of enduring this bit.”

the writing itself is solid on a technical level-- there's a good balance of dialogue to description, no word choices really slammed me in the face, it flowed pretty nicely and was a fast read. flounders a bit in the middle but does pick up speed, a middling-okay pacing. if this were not a debut novel and felt a little bit more done on purpose i would be interested in talking about how the frantic lunge from plot point to plot point mirrors our protag's internal sense of self.

i do not think this rises to the level of farce, or even pastiche. it is a darkly comedic but fairly straightforward fantasy. very light PG romance elements.

so much of it is concerned with perceptions/expectations/visual tropes and then the big baddie is simply a baddie with no further interrogation. like a lot A LOT of philosophical musings on the nature of evil and the expectations thereof creating self image and morality and has unionized goblins. everything else in this book is questioned. you can’t go halfway with a deconstruction or you’re just writing more of the genre you’re trying to deconstruct. there was a scene that really clicked satisfyingly in my brain with a female sorceress, where she goes basically everyone expects me to be a bitch and a whore so let's just cut to the chase and have fun being a bitch and a whore. this alternate viewpoint of misogyny making you evil does not successfully contrast with our protag's internal calibration and view of evil but damn if that isn't the experience of being a woman in stem.

the protagonist, gav, wakes up with No memories and thereby becomes Good. or at least Better. does rozakis feel that everyone is born good and your reactions to things happening to you shape your morality? there's a reveal that one of the murders amnesiac!gav is most torn up about didn't actually happen bc his staff faked it and smuggled her out. i think this seriously undercuts the moderate amount of thinking and soulsearching and figuring out how to atone for past actions he does previously. and then it doesn’t really address any of the problems it tangled with in favor of a movie ending. it did tread a bit into therapyspeak for me. fewer shades of gray than i would have liked.

this book is also extremely heterosexual for what i expect a modern comedy fantasy to be. it neatly sidesteps the gay=/= evil conundrum but it was startling to find our protagonist with not even a curious homosexual thought.

occasionally irritating, but it was funny, except when it had to unfold some plot and forgot about being funny. this was a perfectly pleasantly written debut novel but wasn’t quite what i wanted or expected. it tries a lot of things and it’s interesting to watch the rube goldberg machine of a plot work and fail in some parts, even if it really did not carry through on its central philosophy.

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watching

breezing through a lot of stuff bc it's easier to sleep propped up on my couch arm than in my actual bed. i usually don’t long DNFs but has to remind myself never to try Quo Vadis again. my god is that a tiresome film. and not even pretty costumes or pretty set design for the first forty minutes. whereupon i bailed. all of these were first time watches, dunno why I haven’t been reaching for comfort movies lately

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playing

genshin update knocking it out of the park and also really reminding me of link tearsofthekingdom. also introduces a really good bird you can possess and fly around with. lots of vertical sky/coastline exploration which is so so so fun. i have done most of the things in this update inside a week bc i don't think they anticipated unemployed people like mainlining it between applying for jobs.

this girl's village has background music that reminds me of classic american westerns like bernstein or copland? heavy billy the kid ballet vibes. the music in this update is SO good im excited to yell about it in an future week when they drop the next album.

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making

still fallow baybee. currently incubating the influenza. no longer feverish thank u nyquil

[ghelgheli]

Recognizing this central ambivalence in regard to so-called Western values—whereby they are cast out as “postmodern authoritarianism” only to be embraced as the “true spirit” of societies to come—is essential to understanding the strategic significance of the anti-gender misappropriation of postcolonial language. This ambivalence sheds light on the fact that the superficial takeover frames the “gender ideology” colonizer not simply as the “West as such but [rather as] the West whose healthy (Christian) core had already been destroyed by neo-Marxism and feminism in the 1960s” (Korolczuk and Graff 2018: 812). Very often, the anti-gender misappropriation takes on a decidedly Islamophobic hue; for all their catering to anticolonial sentiments, anti-gender thinkers often claim that “gender ideology,” with its historical roots in anti-European “neo-Marxism and feminism,” goes hand in hand with the threat of (Muslim) immigration. A blatant example of this can be found in former Cardinal Sarah’s proclamation against the two unexpected threats of our times:

On the one hand, the idolatry of Western freedom; on the other, Islamic fundamentalism: atheistic secularism versus religious fanaticism. To use a slogan, we find ourselves between “gender ideology and ISIS.” . . . From these two radicalizations arise the two major threats to the family: its subjectivist disintegration in the secularized West [and] the pseudo-family of ideologized Islam which legitimizes polygamy [and] female subservience. (Sarah 2015)

Sarah aggressively draws up a dual picture of the true enemy—the biopolitical survival of the family is threatened on the one hand by excessive secularization and sexual freedom, and on the other by “ideologized Islam’s pseudo-family,” which marks the degraded and uncivilized counterpart to Christianity’s proper tradition. This discursive construction of “terrorist look-alikes” as possessing an excessive, uncultivated, and dangerous sexuality yet again plays into the same fundamental racialized mapping of progress that colonial gender undergirded (Puar 2007). This rhetoric is mirrored by Norwegian right-wing politician Per-Willy Amundsen (2021) when he writes that:

I will never celebrate pride. First of all, there are only two sexes: man and woman, not three—that is in contradiction with all biological science. Even worse, they are allowed access to our kids to influence them with their radical ideology. This has to be stopped. If FRI [the national LGBT organization] really cared about gay rights, they would get involved in what is happening in Muslim countries, rather than construct fake problems here in Norway. But it is probably easier to speak about “diversity” as long as it doesn’t cost anything. (Amundsen 2021; translation by author) Here Amundsen draws on the well-known trope of trans* and queer people “preying on our kids” while at the same time reinforcing the homonationalist notion that Europe, and in particular Norway, is a safe h(e)aven for queer people—perhaps a bit too much so. In his response to Amundsen, Thee-Yezen Al-Obaide, the leader of SALAM, the organization for queer Muslims in Norway, aptly diagnoses Amundsen’s rhetoric as “transphobia wrapped in Islamophobia” (as quoted in Berg 2021). Amundsen mirrors a central tenet of TERF rhetoric by claiming to be the voice of science, biology, and reason in order to distinguish his own resistance to “gender ideology” from the repressive, regressive one of Muslims. In this way, his argumentation, which basically claims that trans* people don’t exist and certainly shouldn’t be recognized legally, attempts to come off as benign, while Muslim opposition to “gender ideology” is painted as destructive and anti-modern. This double gesture, which allows Amundsen to have his cake and eat it too, is a central trope in different European iterations of anti-gender rhetoric. In France, for example, such discourse claims that, “while ‘gender ideology’ goes too far on the one hand, the patriarchal control of Islam threatens to pull us back into an excessive past. Here of course, ‘Frenchness’ is always already neither Muslim, nor queer (and certainly not both)” (Hemmings 2020: 30). Therefore the French anti-gender movement sees itself as the defender of true Western civilization, both from Western “gender ideology” and from uncivilized “primitives” who are nevertheless themselves victims of “gender ideology.” A similar dynamic plays out in Britain: “Reading Muslims as dangerous heteroactivists and Christians as benign points to how racialization and religion create specific forms of heteroactivism. . . . Even where ‘Muslim parents’ are supported by Christian heteroactivists, they remain other to the nation, and not central to its defence” (Nash and Browne 2020: 145). In the British example, it is clear that white anti-gender actors represent themselves as moderate, reasonable, and caring—often claiming that their resistance to the “politicization” of the classroom has nothing to do with transphobia and homophobia.

Is “Gender Ideology” Western Colonialism? Jenny Andrine Madsen Evang

[pastelpressmachine]

Black Mirror’s Demon 79 and the Justification of Brown Feminine Rage (warning: spoilers)

What if intrusive thoughts can be valid, and it is okay, maybe even necessary to act on them sometimes? If violence isn’t the answer, why must it so often be the question? 

Set in Northern England, 1979,  “Demon 79″ is the final episode of Black Mirror’s sixth season. It follows Nida, a meek sales assistant with a mousy appearance, who is tasked with the most complicated and important mission: to save the world by taking the lives of three human sacrifices in the days leading up to May Day.

Champions of the extended metaphor, Black Mirror employ the talents of Anjana Vasan (an Indian-born, Singaporean-raised, and U.K.-based actress) who plays Nida Huq and Paapa Essiedu (an English actor of Ghanaian descent) who plays Gaap*, the demon Nida accidentally invokes upon finding a talisman that begins this stressful mission of her. Gaap, devilishly handsome and charming, trying to earn his “wings” and be initiated into demonhood reassures the panicking Nida that she is not going mad, she is not a bad person, and the people she is encouraged to kill are vetted through his soul-reading as deserving of death.

*Gaap is considered through stories of demonology and texts related to the Testament of Solomon to be the Prince of Hell, with angels as siblings and a penchant for manipulating women and rendering them infertile. 

Gaap adjusts his form to something more comfortable for Nida by changing into a look-a-like of Bobby Farrell from the famous disco-funk German-Caribbean vocal group known as Boney M. Having the representation of a demonic entity be a Black man while allowing him to manifest into a symbol of appeal for Nida turns the inherent vilification of Black men on its head without contributing to the hypersexualization of Black bodies. Gaap is never presented as a love interest for her, but viewers do get to see them develop a snarky back-and-forth. I almost never see Black and brown leads banter like this. 

Another reason I’m glad Gaap was not portrayed as a sinful symbol of sexual desire is because Indian women already have to navigate a shame-fueled purity culture, and I wouldn’t want to see her grapple with her feelings for someone who is not only outside of her race and religion, but isn’t human. Writers avoided the idea that to love Gaap was to love something forbidden in all possible ways. And we don’t need to see Black folks depicted as not-human. The history of both American cinema and politics has acted on that dangerous perception already. 

When I saw the opening scene of Nida with her wide eyes waking up to get ready for work, I recognized the doe-like innocence in her face as the one I have been raised to emulate. She looks so much like my mother 30 years ago. Minimal makeup, modest clothes, hair neat and tied back.

Moments of Nida’s inner demons being unleashed start off as fantasies she has. She is quietly scurrying through her life as an oppressed minority in 1970′s England, where xenophobia and racism showed up everywhere, from the actions of the British Nationalists to the microaggressions Nida faces at work for simply bringing her potent biryanis to the stock room and “stinking up the place”.

Indian women are some of the least visible in politics historically and presently because we are raised to not make a fuss of things, to be quiet and reserved and let white people act how they want towards us because we are guests in their countries, even when they’ve colonized and pillaged our own. I feel Nida’s pain as she thanks the white people around her for the bare minimum (allowing her an alternative place to eat, such as the basement - where she finds the talisman that changes her life) and avoids the confrontation and rage within her, even sighing in defeat at the NF* tag that has been spray-painted on her front door. 

*NF stands for the National Front, a far-right, fascist political party in the United Kingdom, founded in 1967. 

I crave catharsis for Nida. And for her late mother, whom she has a photo of in her apartment. She explains after the first sacrifice that her mother was perceived as crazy, and now Nida is afraid that people will think the same of her, and this time, because of what she’s done, it will be true. I wondered if Nida’s mom was called crazy because she had stood up for herself, reported abuse or harassment that was occurring within the Indian community itself or in her own home, or tried to leave Nida’s father. None of these scenarios would make the show seem like fiction at all, at least not for many of the South Asian women trapped by the chains of patriarchal ideals. 

There are moments where I am concerned Nida is enamored by Michael Smart, a white politician giving a campaign speech outside the store she works at, as if his mere acknowledgment of her existence without visible disgust is enough to make her heart flutter. Again, I enjoy seeing a Black and brown lead in this episode, and knowing that other viewers are getting to see the many instances of white culture that exposes the racist ignorance and unfair power structures that exist in western society, workplaces, and even the homes of white folks themselves. (I was so happy for little Laura to hear of what was done to her assailant).

When it comes to stopping the world from absolute destruction in a nuclear holocaust, the heroes have never really been people who look like Nida. (It is worth noting that the head writer for this episode was Bisha K. Ali, who also is the executive writer for Disney+’s Ms. Marvel and has tackled many of the same representation issues in her work). People like her don’t have the permission to be loud, angry, or violent without consequences, no matter how justified. Meanwhile, with unchecked authority, bombs go off and innocent people die and children cower in their beds and white men get to act on their worst traits and impulses, however sinful, with little to no accountability.

Even when Nida is being violent, it is for the greater good. Because it has to be. Even female rage has to serve a purpose for others. It cannot just be hers. If she’s going to be angry, she better be trying to solve crime or save the world. 

And through this most guttural and sometimes poisonous part of being a human, Gaap sees her. Maybe it’s because he has transformed in the image of Nida’s celebrity crush or maybe it’s truly the way in which he interacts with her, Gaap sees Nida. He recognizes the type of violence she would and would not indulge in. He tells her she should feel more at ease after killing the first sacrifice, a pedophile she clobbers with a brick before he falls into a river. He continuously recognizes her hesitation, and suggests “Dutch courage”, or booze before following through with the second kill. It is inappropriate in Indian culture for women to drink, which Nida notes when she tells Gaap she doesn’t. Then he asks her if she wants to, something, from the expression on Nida’s face, it doesn’t seem like she has ever been asked. 

Upon entering a pub full of (yes, all white) men, Nida is dismissed by the (also white) female bartender who looks just as irritated by her existence as her coworker Vicky, who had reported how unfair it was that she had to smell Nida’s lunches and endure the lingering scent at work. An older (also white) bartender (who might be the owner) takes her order with the same polite and quiet discomfort of her boss, who had presented her with the basement lunch “solution” to appease Vicky. It’s subtle but the approaches in which different age groups and genders of white English folk take with engaging with Nida demonstrate the variety of ways in which people of colour experience discrimination. At its worst, it is violent hate crimes and unjust legislation that mutates into full blown genocide. At its mildest, it’s passive aggression and strained tolerance. 

It’s more apparent with the second killing (of a man named Keith who killed his wife) that Nida does have the option to be as righteous as she wants to be, which is something I really appreciated about her character. Even if she was killing to prevent the literal apocalypse, and the clock was 6 minutes from midnight -- she must follow the cadence of at least one kill a day -- the moment she has to hear Keith’s justification for what he did and his attempt at absolving himself with the statement “I’m not a bad husband, but --” she swings a hammer at his head to shut him up. She then bashes his head in repeatedly, even to the point where Gaap is wincing at the sight. If this was just about killing people to stop a bigger disaster and loss of life, she wouldn’t be losing herself in the act like she did. 

The third and final kill occurred in the next few minutes, as Keith’s roommate, witnesses her trying to exit, which presents itself as problem in allowing her to continue with the mission if she’s arrested. It’s messy because it was fast, the least premeditated, and she doesn’t know who the man is or if he’d done anything as bad as the previous two skills. Because of this, she’s much more apologetic as the man dies, later finding out from Gaap he was Keith’s brother, Chris, an “ordinary” person who would not have been one of Nida’s choices. 

But as Gaap says, “What’s done is done”. And the three lines on the talisman should have disappeared indicating that Nida has fulfilled her duty. But it still has a line remaining, so a confused Gaap dials 666 (of course) on Nida’s rotary phone to explain the issue to his superiors. He tells Nida that Keith apparently didn’t count because he’s a murderer and anyone who’s been directly responsible for the death of another human being (not counting future deaths they might be responsible for) is off limits. Chris counted because his death still occurred just before midnight. 

Nida doesn’t snap psychologically and decide she enjoys this and is going to become a serial killer, which is a direction I find common in other Black Mirror episodes, where the white and/or male character loses it and/or goes on a killing spree. She grapples once more with her initial unwillingness to participate in this because even when given the go-ahead and to have the most reason to, she enters a mental boxing ring with her instinct v. culture v. morals. From my own experience and what I have seen in my own community, outward expression of rage is never the first emotion a woman reaches for...because she can’t always afford to in the way others can. 

“My whole life, I never wished harm on anyone.” 

Gaap tells her what’s at risk for him, and he describes a fate of punishment that she says sounds like her life now. She stands, empathizing with an actual demon, and deciding to continue with the mission. Gaap also reminds her this isn’t solely for him; she possessed a darkness within her that drew her to the talisman. So, he asks her, who pissed her off?

To Possette’s Shoes they go. 

Vicky, a prime choice for the grand finale, delegates the task of attending to the young girl Laura (from earlier) and her mother to Nida. Because the little girl creeps Vicky out. Gaap informs Nida that because she killed Laura’s dad, Laura doesn’t kill herself at 28 and instead goes to therapy, becomes a mother at 29, and a grandmother at 57. It’s a comforting thought amidst the mayhem of it all. 

Michael Smart makes an appearance once more, as his father and the boss’s father, are old college friends, and Nida’s boss had promised him a suit and shoes on the house. The boss unsurprisingly selects Vicky as the sales attendant, with Gaap grumbling to himself as Nida’s eyes go from ‘excited crush’ to just crushed. Her boss then chooses to notice the boxes on the floor from when Vicky could’ve been cleaning up and hisses at Nida, “Could you pick up the bloody mess?” This prompts Gaap to suggest the boss be the next to go. 

Nida moves on to cleaning up the boxes, eavesdropping on the conversation between Michael and Vicky. When Michael says he hopes he has her vote, she says she is siding with the National Front who she believes will help rid the town of all the pesky foreigners. And then Michael Smart reveals himself to be what a lot of politicians are: covert bigots. He explains to Vicky that an explicitly xenophobic campaign would be too polarizing, so you have to elect a moderate who can win over the masses and put the evil plans in motion. (Sound familiar?) 

There is a subliminal language spoken among white supremacists, even if they smile politely at people who look like me and Nida. And this revelation that she witnesses presents an even more justifiable option for Nida’s third kill. 

She asks Gaap to give her information about Michael’s future, which he hesitantly reveals to her. Michael Smart wins the election, eventually becomes prime minister, and leads a new world order built on white supremacy. Nida decides he is the final target, but Gaap tells her he wouldn’t be the right choice because the Satanic world he comes from is a fan of his work and everyone there would want Michael to be able to facilitate the upcoming deaths that occur as a result of him first winning the election to become a member of Parliament. 

But Nida is set on him, or no one, giving Gaap the ultimatum to get on board or risk his own banishment after failing his initiation. 

Meanwhile, a police investigation occurs which leads to the bar staff identifying Nida as a “muttering Indian woman” who was at the bar the night Keith died. Len Fisher of Tipley Police arrives at Nida’s apartment, as part of routine questioning, and she invites him in, with Gaap’s suggestion to kill him. 

Fisher is the first white person to speak to her as person, too, even though he’s there on the premise of Nida being a potential suspect. Maybe this is more covert trust-building behaviour, maybe as a cop, maybe as someone generally suspicious of people of colour. He is the most mild-mannered, middle-man in the whole story. 

Fisher follows Nida who follows Smart after his speech at town hall. This is where I’m a little surprised but not displeased. The other episodes end with something sad, violent, and/or redemptive. Nida gets a bit of everything, but as with all things Black Mirror, not in the way you’d expect. In society, Nida may be reduced to a mad woman telling an insensible story, enduring the same perception people had of her mother. But society doesn’t last long, and she walks off into a kind of nuclear, fiery sunset with a new friend. 

The deadline for the sacrifices had been May Day, also known as Workers’ Day or International Workers’ Day to commemorate the struggles and gains made by workers and the labour movement. Nida, representing intersectional identities of the working class (immigrants, women, people of colour), was not listened to or believed, and the world ended because of it. Her weapon of choice had been a hammer, a tool meant for building that was used for destructive but necessary purposes. This could be a reference to the Communist party’s symbol of a hammer and sickle, which represents proletarian solidarity. The meaning of the episode, particularly its ending, captures the significance of the working class and how our world relies on them to function and last. When their efforts are stunted, their sacrifices are in vain, or they are not heard, the world ends. 

[mariacallous]

Well, if you’re just joining us, the nation has delivered an all-night victim impact statement. Labour has won a landslide and the Conservatives have suffered their worst ever general election result. Keir Starmer – the prime minister – has promised “national renewal … to fight until you believe again”. Liz Truss has failed to save South West Norfolk, let alone “the west”. That is the big picture (if not the whole picture, with turnout and Labour’s vote share notably low). Meanwhile, it’s incredible to think that only a short while ago we thought we’d eradicated measles and Nigel Farage. Both have now been brought back, largely by the same people.

But look, after the 3am to 7am shift, no one will be able to say the right doesn’t do comedy. There were moments worthy of entire Netflix specials as in sports halls and community centres various Dickensian grotesques were ushered into their Christmas future, live on stage. Alas, it was going to take more than buying the Cratchits a turkey to get out of this one. Jacob Rees-Mogg heard his fate standing next to a candidate wearing a baked bean balaclava. He’ll be crying into Nanny’s starched bosom today. Committed sewage apologist Thérèse Coffey was pumped into the sea in Suffolk Coastal. Andrea Jenkyns had the middle finger given to her by the voters of Morley and Outwood. In Welwyn Hatfield, Grant Shapps chanted “supermajority” five times into the mirror, and then it came for him.

Then again, Michael Portillo losing his seat was supposedly 1997’s big moment. So perhaps the question is: in two years’ time, which current hate figure will be presenting a cosy travelogue on Europe’s most picturesque illegal migration routes? Alternatively, do remember that one person’s onstage humiliation is another person’s milk round for directorships in the arms trade.

Speaking of absolute weapons, hat twat George Galloway wimped out of his own count in Rochdale, presumably out of fatigability. He lost to Labour. There was jubilation for the Lib Dems, who finished not a million miles behind “the natural party of government”, and for the Greens, who won all four of their target seats. The SNP can now squeeze its MPs round the flip-down dining table of a motorhome. Referendum arguments may move to Northern Ireland, with Sinn Féin now that nation’s largest Westminster party.

As for Reform … Farage won in Clacton, a constituency for which he will now have to hold surgeries, presumably by Zoom link from his hot desk in the US presidential colon. Or as he put it in his victory speech: “This is the first steps of something that is going to stun all of you” – at least confirming his political abattoir will be bolt-gunning its victims unconscious first. Farage is the horror version of Inside Out, where Mendacity is only just holding off Racism at the control console. His cultural hinterland extends to a single Goodbye, Mr Chips DVD he got free with the Sunday Times in 2008, and the idea that this hollow chancer should still be one of the most significant politicians of the age says everything about the age.

Anyway, back to the Conservatives’ four-hour in-memoriam reel. Penny Mordaunt, Jonathan Gullis, Michael Fabricant, Gillian Keegan, Steve Baker, Alex Chalk, Johnny Mercer, Michelle Donelan, Victoria Prentis, Liam Fox, Mark Harper … all out, along with many more. So many cabinet ministers fell that the ones who live may actually develop survivor guilt. It’s currently unclear how gruesome things will be among the extant Conservatives in this post-apocalyptic world. As a fictional president once wondered of Dr Strangelove, will the living not end up envying the dead? Far from it, Strangelove reassures him, forcing down an involuntary Nazi salute. What will abound is a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead!

Speaking of which, 13th fairy Suella Braverman finally turned up, holding on in Fareham and cooing: “I am sorry that my party didn’t listen to you. The Conservative party has let you down.” Expect to see her humbly attempting to disembowel fellow survivors Jeremy Hunt and James Cleverly in the forthcoming trial-by-combat for what convention demands we style as “the soul of the Conservative party”.

At his count, Rishi Sunak explained he’d already conceded the election in a congratulatory call to Keir Starmer, adding, “I take responsibility for the loss.” In Downing Street, he confirmed he would be standing down as Tory leader in some sort of due course, stressing, “I have heard your anger.” Then, instead of yet another speech straight from the Tortured Prime Minister’s Department, this one offered humility and magnanimity, as well as a pointed reminder of the positive (and fragile?) progress that saw him become the UK’s first British-Asian prime minister. What a contrast to the relentless negativity of his past six weeks. Sunak’s campaign was conducted like a gender-reveal party where the device that’s meant to release the puff of blue smoke accidentally functions as a pipe bomb and burns the house down.

It also closed out several years of mindboggling chaos, dysfunction and national decline. They won’t be playing anything from this album on the Conservative party’s Eras tour. The Tories have cycled through five prime ministers over the past eight years, to the point where they were recently found going through the rubbish, pulling the first guy back out, thinking, “Actually, he doesn’t look half bad now,” and making him foreign secretary. This is the behaviour of addicts.

Not that they have the monopoly on erraticism. Any dispassionate view of these results suggests the fabled post-Brexit “realignment” is more of a dealignment – the huge sweeping gains of this or that political moment able to be reversed in previously unthinkable timespans. Volatility might now be our defining electoral characteristic, and a rise in sectarian politics cannot and should not be ignored. Because hey – what’s the worst that can happen with that one? Meanwhile, many people who derided the simplistic “Get Brexit done” slogan in 2019 have pretended not to notice that the winner here went out under the even more gnomic banner of “Change”.

Yet in the wider global context, what a win. One summer evening in 1914, the foreign secretary, Edward Grey, famously remarked: “The lamps are going out all over Europe.” In our own times, a darkening has recently felt at hand, as hard- or extreme-right parties have gained ground across the continent, to say nothing of the US. But here – in this country, in this moment – a different direction has been taken. That matters today, and anyone not on the wingnut fringes, who hopes to avoid those gathering shadows, should wish Keir Starmer good luck with his task. For plenty who would snuff out the lamps are also rising – increasingly, they walk among us.

[redbusters]

hopefully this is the last long post i will ever have to make about hit disney show the owl house but I am so sick of people posting paragraphs of lukewarm takes on philip's death so. one last rant for the road, i suppose.

belos's death wasn't unsatisfying, nor was it purely physical. first of all, philip is a representation of greater societal problems (which are notably still there, remember, there's people who want to reestablish his order for their own gain). he is a plague and parasite on the world and a demonstration of humanity's worst cruelties, and his pathetic death by boiling rain and stomping as the most true and good character, who does her best to do right by everyone and believes in second chances, in the entire show, looks at him with no emotion in a way that directly parallels the way caleb's ghost looks down upon him, and he claws at her feet in a desperate attempt to use another person's good nature once again to get what he wants, and fails and dies, is INCREDIBLY symbolic.

and TWO. the point ISN'T that philip is an Evil Liar Who Lies and his backstory is being shafted for simple evil, he is an incredibly realistic depiction of how many people are consumed by their fear of what they don't understand and their hatred, let it fester into a desire to harm, and then elaborate lies to not only manipulate others but trick themselves by their own rhetoric so they don't have to feel bad for it

throughout the show philip is paralleled to cult leaders and militaristic dictators, and he is LITERALLY a puritan colonizer. philip is white man ego in its purest form. yes, the awful society is 75% the fault of Just One Guy, but this is a cartoon. he represents every man who has tried to build a world like this, who burns what he doesn't understand and makes up lies to justify it and trick his own guilt into not eating him alive.

people keep bitching that philip didn't truly face his own lies and realize how awful he was before he died, or that he wasn't given any chance to change, but philip has run the fuck out of chances. the point is he will never learn because he chooses not to. philip had to die because he'd rather lie and rot and take everyone down with him than EVER admit he's wrong. he killed his brother because he tricked himself into believing that caleb betrayed him, romanticized the idea of Caleb in his head and delusionally convinced himself that he tried to save him, while his knife hangs over his brother's ghost eternally, symbolizing the shoved down guilt he'll never truly outrun.

he made hunter believe it was his fault that philip repeatedly harmed him, he told the people of the isles after slaughtering them over and over that it's better if he rules them because he is better than them, he eternally victimizes himself over and over because he is an abuser. his lies are not just to others but to himself. he makes himself believe that the ends justify the means, when the ends are nonsensical rhetoric and the means are horrific violence. because philip is a person who may have had the capacity for good, but he chooses to live in his own hatred and rot everything around him, taking advantage of hunger for power and good natured kindness in the same breath, and he chooses to turn away from the mirror every time, to refuse to acknowledge the monster he's become because he's a coward.

the titan said it themself. his motives aren't genuine, not because he's evil for evil's sake but because he'd do anything to continue to live in his own delusion of heroism and perpetual victimhood. philip is someone you can find in the behaviors of dictators and colonists and evangelical christians and run of the mill abusers all throughout history. this doesn't make him a cookie cutter villain, it makes him a REALISTIC villain, or as realistic as you can get in a cartoon on the disney channel. he wants power and he wants admiration and he wants death and suffering to the people he's scared of, and he'd rather kill himself and take everyone down with him than ever face who he is.

not all villains need a redemption arc to be complex. he doesn't love to rub his hands together cartoonishly and watch the world burn, but some people do actually enjoy harming others. but the realism comes from how he lies to himself and others about it.

sometimes someone can be truly evil, not because they were born that way, but because they choose to be, and because they choose to live in denial about it until they're rotting in the ground.

[cryptovalid]

The politics of Operation Zero Tolerance

If you've followed X-men '97, you know that's it's more than competently executed nostalgia-bait. It's a deconstruction of the original ideological framework of the X-men. I'll be riffing off of the way that Operation Zero Tolerance mirrors real world alt-right ideology and where the show might lead this theme. Spoilers ahead up to episode 8. It's a long one.

So the reflections of the January 6th insurrection, Great Replacement conspiracy and stochastic terrorism are pretty spot on. But what do the Prime candidates actually believe?

Mutants are constantly referred to as 'the next step in human evolution'. This frightens some non-mutants, who see themselves being replaced. Their solution is to subjugate mutants.

I want to focus on some of the ways this doesn't make sense first.

1. Evolution doesn't have well defined 'next steps': every new generation is slightly different from the previous, so that over time new traits will emerge and become common, and others will become less widespread. In the comics, this is not why mutants exist: the are the result of alien tampering with human dna: the Celestials implanted the X-gene in some humans. So 'mutants' are demonstrably just a strain of humanity, and the main reason humans have mutant babies is that their own genes are getting expressed in a new way.

2. No amount of control or violence can stop this. The rate at which mutants appear isn't even dependent on their own reproductive success since most mutants have human parents.

We don't know why more and more mutants are being born now, but OZT will not stop this. It's not even their goal. When they say human being are being 'replaced', they actually mean replaced as the ruling class of the planet. Bastion's 'utopia' doesn't have less mutants being born, just used as slave labor.

This really puts the anxiety of OZT into focus: they want to maintain privilege. They aren't really being 'replaced', any more than older generations are always 'replaced' by younger generations. They are primarily afraid that mutants will render them obsolete in the labor market. But if mutants can be forced to do unpaid labor for their benefit, that doesn't threaten them.

The way this parallels the rhetoric of the alt right is striking. Obviously, the reasons why jobs are moving overseas are different: colonized populations are more exploitable by capital. But the fears are the same: my children are different from me, and if I'm not valued for my labor, I will become poor. Like OZT, the alt right also chooses to enact violence even though it won't solve either of these issues. the MAGA-crowd threatens non-conformity and asserts its dominance to maintain its relative privilege over other groups. This is why it's all culture war stuff. The alt right isn't interested in striking to improve conditions for workers, it will attack immigrants and minorities they perceive as competition. Never the bosses that make the hiring decisions. It's scapegoating.

Even child and slave labor are on the table. Because again, this 'economic anxiety' isn't triggered by other people doing the work, just by other people getting money, care and respect that they feel they are owed.

It's not the solution that matters to OZT or the alt right: it's the catharsis of violence and control. It's interesting that OZT actually has a better point: mutants are inherently better at some jobs, some mutants ARE inherently dangerous. Their anxiety is way more warranted.

And I think that is what makes OZT hit so hard as an allegory: it is a steel man version of every bigot's rhetoric, and it is horrifying.

Where might the show take this theme? I don't think the show will end with the X-men fighting Magneto, as that would undermine the show's thematic support for his ideals. Magneto might be defeated, but that will not be the finale. I think the institutional support for OZT will be the closing statement.

The events of episode 8 will be blamed on the X-men. There's just too many ways that a sleeper that Wolverine cut to ribbons can be spun and Bastion has stated multiple times that he understands the optics of martyring mutants. In my opinion this explains how the primes failed to kill a single X-man, even though Trask could take down the whole team.

This twist will (I think) be used to set up the Avengers as the final threat: the X-men try to reason with Magneto, the Avengers attack him, and maybe Xavier erases Magneto's memory as a prelude to Onslaught.

Onslaught can then lead into Heroes Reborn; when Onslaught threatens to kill the Avengers and Fantastic Four, Franklin Richards creates a parallel universe, where they live out their lives in blissfull ignorance of mutants. I believe this could explain why the MCU does not have mutants: it's the Heroes Reborn Universe (The FF could live in a separate universe).

So how to put a button on OZT? I don't think that they will end as a political force (these ideas will remain relevant in the fiction as in the real world). I think the show will obviously set up a fight with Bastion, but the ideological refutation will have to come from Mrs. Da Costa. She is the poster child of an apathetic liberal, who will only support mutants in fashionable ways. If she ends the series giving up her social status to save her son, perhaps even dying, it will thematically reinforce the need for allies to be traitors of their own privilege.

This ties in with my final speculation. This is a weird one and a reach. We have not seen Roberto Da Costa's father. We also don't know where Bastion's father is (who is essentially Nimrod). Is it possible that they are half-brothers? Emmanuel Da Costa is a prominent anti-mutant member of the Hellfire Club, and it's strange he hasn't shown up yet. Honestly, this could possibly explain why Roberto is so light-skinned. Which I do not want to make excuses for otherwise.

[atticsandwich]

Exploring how Obey Me!'s portrayal of the Celestial Realm mirrors that of the how the Christian heaven is used as propaganda, and how Simeon, Luke, and Raphael tie-in with real-life people's experiences of the Christian faith.

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to preface: I was born Christian and was raised as such, but renounced my religion when I was around 18. Experiences vary in different parts of the world of course, however, I will also be tying in things I see from online conversations about Christianity. Admittedly a lot of my insight comes from my experience (and by extension, my family and friends) of Christianity in my area of the world (southeast asia).

Additionally, this post is purely for fun and speculation, and my fascination with subversive portrayals of religion, particularly of Christianity. Please note that I will use the word "religion" as a whole, but this post will specifically go into Christianity, and by proxy, its branches.

As this post is a spur-of-the-moment thing, it is not proofread, so I apologize for any spelling or grammatical errors!

‼️This post will contain spoilers‼️

To start, let's lay out the things we know about the Celestial Realm from the story.

The Celestial Realm is home of the angels, and in contrast to the Devildom, it is a realm of permanent daylight.

Michael acts as its authority, however, we know that its most supreme being is the Father, who we can presume created the realm and its angels. Unlike the sleeping Demon Lord, we are at least aware that Father is still active, although presumably leaves the governing to Michael.

Similar to real-life angelology, the Celestial Realm also divides its angels by ranks. The current known ranks are Seraphim, Throne, Cherubim, Principality, Dominion, and Archangel.

Key observations:

Angels can either fall to become demons (demon brothers) or be stripped of their blessing and become human (Simeon).

Luke's current angel rank is unknown. We can assume this is from inexperience, as despite being implied to be at least a thousand years old, he acts and behaves like a typical ten year old.

Although "falling" can be a punishment by acting out of defiance against its virtues, we know that angels can still be morally grey, and in some cases, dubious, and still not be stripped of their blessing.

Now to the bulk of this analysis.

I. Christianity as a tool for propaganda and colonization

This is pretty basic history - western colonizers have used religion as a basis of conquering "new worlds" in the name of spreading their faith and belief systems. The effects of this still persist until today - racism, homophobia, etc. in general can be traced back to the colonial era. In more present-day scenarios, religion is also used as a leverage for morality and what people deem as "right or wrong". For some parts, it aligns with basic humanity, however, we know very well that it can also be used to spread bigotry and false moral high grounds as a justification for mistreatment of people.

In many countries, politics and religion go hand in hand. Many politicians will use their beliefs as a basis for bills and laws, and it trickles down to the justice system, where judges can display religous bias (whether consciously or not) in favor of their personal beliefs. As such, many politicians will use religion to forward their name and agenda, in the pretense of being a devout practicioner, in order to garner relatability and bias from people of the same faith. In Christianity, for example, many politicians will use the term "Lord's servant" as a subtext for people to latch onto.

In a societal context, we are very familiar with the phrase "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" as a rebuttal for homosexual relationships, and in general, relationships that bigoted Christians believe do not follow in their God's text. Cherry-picking bible verses and anecdotes to further their justification for acting the way they do is also a very common occurence, even though that very same Bible they read also emphasize the value of spreading love, with hate having no place in heaven.

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II. How it ties to the Celestial Realm

Behind its perma-daylight nature, we learn that the Celestial Realm is a place of strict rule and order, and an angel can easily get demoted, as was the previous case for Simeon, who we know was originally a Seraphim, and in some cases, even falling to demonhood, like the brothers. This walking-on-eggshells type of ordinance is very tricky, as the reasoning for being casted out of the realm can get very blurry. In Lilith's case, it was her act of using Celestial Realm medicine in order to heal a human she loved; this then led to Lucifer questioning why her act was tantamount to falling, as he always believed love to be a precious thing. This doubt and questioning, however, then led to his own falling, which led to the rest of the brothers siding with him and Lilith, resulting in the Great Celestial War.

We can then paint a picture of the Celestial Realm as a false/disillusioned utopia - externally, it is very lavish, warm, and golden, but taking a closer look reveals its suffocating, anti-freedom, gray nature, where one wrong move could spell your last day. Simeon is very much aware of this, and has, on multiple occassions, openly expressed disdain on how the realm operates.

It is then a matter of Self vs. Governance; at what point does the Celestial Realm draw the line between individual autonomy and total subjugation of its angels? If Lucifer, once one of its most prominent, respected, and powerful angels, gets casted due to defiance for asking a very valid question regarding a value that is taught and propagated within the realm, as he believes Lilith's punishment directly goes against that value, then what of the lesser angels who wish to ask the same? If standing up for those you hold dear is tantamount to unholiness, then why teach the value of love and family in the first place?

I hope you can see where I'm going here - the teaching of these values in the Celestial Realm being the same ones that can get you ostracized VS. using these values to advance a real-world political agenda and cherry-picked beliefs is intrinsically linked.

People that use religion as a means to justify cruelty or feign moral superiority despite the main point of their religion being to "love everyone equally, as you do yourself" are setting a status quo that they built for themselves and their hivemind - if you don't follow these specific rules and beliefs, you are not a true devout. If you question or point out inaccuracies on the beliefs that we want you to follow, you are a deviant.

Sound familiar yet?

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III. The three main angels

Excluding Michael and the demon brothers pre-fall, there are three other angels the story focuses on: Luke, Simeon, and Raphael. Despite all three being angels, they cannot be any more similar from each other. One is a brash, tempermental, and an overexcited youth with a sweet tooth; one freely lies and openly involves themselves in un-angelic deeds; and the other is a quiet, stoic, and blunt individual with a questionable taste in cuisine. These three angels encapsulate, almost perfectly, a religous pipeline.

IIIA. Luke

Luke represents the first entry to a religion (I'd use the word indoctrination, but I don't want to unknowingly portray it negatively as some people are born into a religion by default). He is young, inexperienced, idolizes a high-ranking angel who he follows with no question, and above all, naive. We know that he does not know the full reason of why the brothers fell, nor does he know of Lilith. Similarly, children and young people in religion often follow their parents/guardians blindly without question, their understanding of faith being minimal and surface level, something easily digestible for a young, developing mind.

IIIB. Raphael

Raphael is compliance. He knows and understand the ins-and-outs, the ifs-and-whys of the realm, yet continues to follow its order. Although he did not side with Lucifer, we eventually learn that he wishes he did (most recently in NB), yet unlike Simeon, does not actively wallow in his choice and continues to fulfill his duty as a Seraph. Whether we see a development with this in Nightbringer, time will tell. In a similar vein, many people will silently comply with their own faith, regardless of doubt. In my experience, this compliance, either out of familial pressure or feeling indebted to a religion, starts to happen during major developmental stages, either as a late teen or early adulthood, when you can freely do your own research and start to understand the deeper intricacies of a particular religion.

IIIC. Simeon

Simeon is representative of actively going against the status quo. He is an angel that has, on numerous occassions, displayed manipulative and wrathful tendencies, and has admitted to freely partake in lies and deceit. He has also stated that his biggest regret in life was not siding with Lucifer during the war, which is why he actively tries to help him and the brothers as much as he can, not caring if his action could be deemed as heresy. Although we see bits and pieces of it in the original game, Nightbringer Simeon fully procalims this, as asking him to ally with the brothers will result to him in saying that he always will be on their side. In real life, people have their own breaking point that leads them to this path, no matter how personal or educated the reasoning may be. Denouncing one's faith, especially one that was given to you by birth, can be considered an act of both defiance, and in the case of Christianity, becoming unholy, or impure.

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IV. The Celestial Realm as a commentary of how religion, particularly Christianity, is used in real life as a tool to further a cherry-picked, propaganda-ridden agenda, despite it being a contradiction to its teachings.

It is no secret that a lot of societal problems nowadays regarding bigotry, refusal of understanding, and unacceptance of others outside your status quo can be traced back to religous conservatives. This is a walking contradiction, of course, as Christian teachings always puts love above all, yet bringing this up as a rebuttal will elicit anger, not reflection. The Celestial Realm is the same, as its blurry definition of defiance goes against its importance of love and familial relationships, so much so that in its eyes, an angel trying to elicit defiance by acting un-angel-like is ultimately a lot more angelic than one who dares question why its teachings are being used as a leverage of defiance.

Of course, a lot of this can be chalked up to mere coincidence, and some might even say that I'm stretching a lot here, but it's still very interesting that a portrayal of heaven is morally ambigous at best. In some ways, the Devildom, or what's supposed to be hell, feels like the better place to live in out of the two.

Anyways, if you made it this far, thank you for reading my random spat-out ramble that i started writing out of nowhere and I fixated on finishing 💀 Share your thoughts with me too, if you'd like. I'd love to hear what you guys think.

[thewickerking]

also. Sorry. *applies my clown makeup* as a usamerican i do find a majority of this sites complaints about americans incredibly stupid. the us is pretty huge and has one of the largest populations by country in the world. This is not an excuse for ignorant behavior or anything, but generalizations of americans as these classist stereotypes of conservative hicks and people who don't think other countries are real and don't care abt their struggles is like. incredibly ignorant and complaining about us racism like it's unique (specific things might be sure, but europe isn't less racist and bigoted. France banning hijab, treatment of romani people on a wide scale, plenty of governments backing israel, etc.) Like. Respectfully there's no place in the world safe from all forms of bigotry and ur not better than americans for having Healthcare liiiike. Ppl will mock our government for being bad like there's zero criticism of it within the. Entirety of the us. And also like there aren't bad governments and officials and decisions made in europe????? Like honestly if a european wants to criticize the us i don't want to hear it bc it's likely going to be as biased and closeminded as they claim all americans are. And like there are reasonable things to say about the closeminded usamericans that exist and cultural norms that are bad, and so many other things but people act like it's unique to usamericans and none of its unique!!! the patterns of colonization that seep through everything are everywhere and u need to look in the mirror before complaining abt other countries having problems!! Also like. The constant mockery of systems in place that. Kill people. Our healthcare, school shootings, homelessness crises, etc. Like okay cool did you have fun making fun of victims of harmful systems? Did that make you feel nice and perfect thiusands of miles away? ALSO. there's much to be said abt us centric websites n shit but ppl started talking about that and now white europeans latched onto being morally Right to complain abt the us everytime there's even the slightest hint that someone might live here. Like us centrism is a thing that should be talked about! Stop complaining in the fucking notes of a poll asking if you think damn is a swear and acting like it pains you to have to deal with a slightly different culture. I'm going to rip my hair out. Not going into detail cause this already too long but it's also worth saying that white europeans will very much mock and complain about things being american and bad when it's like. Black people existing. Fat people existing. Disabled people existing. Like okaaaaay complain abt the meanie bigoted american. Call us obese and stupid and aggressive and ignorant. Really shows that you're the good, not bigoted person in this scenario 😐😐

[fatehbaz]

[S]and has acquired a conspicuous profile in contemporary urbanization over the past two decades. [...] [S]and but also gravel and crushed rock, are the fastest-growing category of extracted material. Their extraction has increased six-fold in the Asia-Pacific region over the last two decades. Singapore, a city-state in Southeast Asia the size of New York City and half the size of London, is the largest per capita importer of sand in the world. The city-state’s urbanization and never-ending construction [...] is partly responsible for its considerable appetite for sand, but this use pales in comparison to the amount it requires for its land reclamation project, which has seen the city-state expand its territory from 585 square kilometers in 1959 to 724 in 2022. Singapore’s construction of territory, and the sand it has imported from all over Southeast Asia to resource its geophysical projection of sovereignty, invites us to consider the implications of urbanization’s enrollment of greater and greater volumes of sediment, and the geopolitics of the global sand crisis. [...]

As sediment flows and locks into place, it expresses characteristics of all three states of matter, depositing and eroding [...]. A geomorphological errantry, sediment is always on the move [...]. In its multiplicity, sand becomes a kind of narrator for those elements [...]. In its modulation [...], sediment sutures together landscapes that are neither solid nor fluid, but the porous interplay [...].

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Between 2006 and 2016, Singapore, with a population of less than six million, was the top importer of sand in the world four times. Land reclamation there truly began with colonization by the British East India Company, with Boat Quay in 1822, when three hundred or so convict laborers who were paid pittances chopped down hills and cut up stones to embank a swamp, lest it remain fallow. When Singapore became an independent city-state in 1965, reclamation projects initially cut down hills for fill material, flattening the interior and exterior of the main island alike. [...] As these projects grew more expansive and the city-state’s demand for sand intensified, Malaysia and then Indonesia banned sand exports to Singapore [...]. This [resulting] price spike shook the city-state to its core, prompting the opening of a series of construction sand stockpiles [...]. The government began purchasing sand through its web of contractors and subcontractors from Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, and Myanmar. [...]

The securitization of sand in multiple stockpiles in Singapore eerily mirrors what happened in the extractive sandscapes of its origin: similarly sized dunes bloomed along the banks of mangroves in Koh Kong, Cambodia, like a dream herniating into reality, an invasive species of landscape bursting at the seam where the land met the water, still haunting riverbeds years after the dredging stopped. [...]

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[T]he fantasy of reclaimed land through dubiously sourced rudiments of city-statecraft. [...] This kind of work is normally kept out of sight behind physical partitions as well as the labyrinthine contractual involutions of procurement arrangements, until it is seamlessly assumed by the whole, consumed by land as a homogenous legal entity [...] [B]ehind the mask, another mask. [...] [T]he sand barges and ships enter the maritime waters of Singapore from [...] legally undisclosable sources of its origin.

The eponymous proclamation [...] is the legal mechanism by which a piece of reclaimed land is “proclaimed” as state land proper by the president. A reclamation can only become state land by the text of a proclamation, a eucharistic procedure which purifies the land of its ambiguous sedimentary origin. Prior to that it is foreshore or seabed, but once it has been proclaimed, “thereupon that land shall immediately vest in the State freed and discharged from all public and private rights [...] over the foreshore or the sea-bed before the same were so reclaimed.” [...]

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The limit to seeing like a state is that the state has a way of doing things that it can’t see, and of refusing to register that which does not meet its threshold of intelligibility.

It blinds itself through the loophole, the nondisclosure agreement, the handshake and its subtle para-political fission. [...]

Singapore’s continued economic prosperity depends on the speculative projection of its territory through unequal economic exchange, disguising it through fabulations of sovereign ingenuity like the Gardens by the Bay. [...]

[There is an] asymmetry between its curated artifice and the remote terraqueous landscapes this curation predates upon, unsettling the ground on which the city-state projects its most delirious fictions of sovereignty [...].

But those very spaces of nondescript hinterland are the logistical and industrial engines which make the Gardens possible. [...]

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[T]he sheer colonial and postcolonial history of geographic expansion and environmental transformation implies that there are still further worlds to extract for reproducing the global city. Urban form rewired by geo-economic fortune and political repression subversively enroll land and labor into its globe-spanning machinery: it needs to keep on expanding to stay ahead of whatever anticipated global economic movement will buoy it in the future. [...] The transmutation of Singapore’s development trajectory is not historical, but contemporary: Singapore is the global city as a centripetal conjugator of space-time, funneling either term through supply chains that pass through it to produce territory as a plasticity [...].

The calamity it visited on the population of Koh Sralao was first pioneered all over Singapore and its outlying islands in the name of necessity, modernization, and the nation, displacing Orang Laut and Orang Pulau communities, who faced a choice to either abandon their maritime ways or resettle further afield in Malaysia or Indonesia. Many of Singapore’s southern islands were grafted together and erased by land reclamation, with Jurong Island in particular becoming an agglomeration of eighteen different islands, their Malay names now lost, sunk together into the catacombs of a dedicated petrochemical refining and storage complex.

Instead of being haunted by the sediment it has reclaimed its land with, and the rhythms and ecologies this sediment subtended, the global city and its subcontracted tendrils haunt those vestiges of maritime and riverine life bound by sediment like a vengeful ghost, compelled to repeat its actions, and to forget them in the projection of another tabula rasa.

---

All text above by: William Jamieson. “Extracting Sovereignty: Land Reclamation in Southeast Asia and the Emergence of the Global Sand Crisis.” e-flux Journal Issue #137. June 2023. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism.]

[elysia-nsimp]

Tagging: @queerlordsimon @thesunshineriptide @aetherphobia @end3rm1st @ladyzsgolla

Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 5 // Part 6

Warnings: Cursing, caps, joking threats

Enjoy lmao

——

Leona: anyway please stop shoving paper up your ass

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Yuu: they’re so louuddddd

Floyd, handing them scissors: go get them

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Ruggie: The theme is jungle animals why is Hatsune Miku here

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Deuce: maybe the real lollipops were the friends we made along the way :)

Trey: no. eat food.

——

Jack, holding up a teachers pass:

Epel: you don’t need to hold the pass up, you look like a police officer

Jack: Its like I have full immunity to everything, just like a real police badge!

——

Trey, walking into a classroom:

Ruggie, pulling tissues out of a box:

Them, making eye contact as Ruggie rapidly removes tissues:

Trey: …im not gonna question

Ruggie: good. [RUNS AWAY]

——

Riddle: are you really over there insulting a bug?

Deuce: ITS BEING A DUMBASS

——

Ruggie: Good job escaping Colonel Sanders “The Riddler”

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Ace: I couldn’t decide if I was gonna say “crunky” or “cookie” so I said “kroonky”

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Jack: I will protect you from glowsticks and danny devito

Yuu: thank you

——

Floyd, throwing a stuffed shrimp around then biting it:

Yuu: What are you DOING to that poor thing

Floyd: showing it love and affection

Yuu: …PLEASE don’t fall in love with me

——

Deuce: I thought this was a movie about skiing. Lord help us all.

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Ace: mariah carey’s spirit has possessed me starting today

Deuce: I’m calling an exorcist.

——

Lilia: ITS MY WAY OR THE HIGH WAY

[highway to hell starts playing]

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Azul: That's why we don't enforce child labor--because they'd suck at it

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Riddle: i think I know more about semi-colons than YOU DO

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Floyd: fill your mind with shrek! be free!!

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Ruggie: I, too, am tiny, and scared, and have no money

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Idia: get in bitch we're going to eeby deeby where the souls are damned and the girls are pretty

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Epel: y’all eat your eggs with or without the crust?

Jack: what a terrible day to have ears

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Azul: maybe american flags are the new cryptocurrency

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Idia: i do not care about freddy fabear's love life

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Vil: Do not throw the ham across the library!

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Jack: you look very intense

Leona: yea my face just does that

Jack: yea mine too

——

Azul: Mansplain, manipulate, malewife

Floyd, NOT PAYING ATTENTION: that's donkey from shrek

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Deuce: It’s not even objectively true, it’s right!

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The dark mirror: i sense no magiwal powew fwom dis one. cowowless, shapeless, vaycant

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Kalim: The animals not gay enough for Jumanji get sent to jonga

Jamil: I just looked it up. Jonga is a vehicle. What the fuck?

——

Trey: nope, just sleeping

Ace: free trial of death?

Trey: no, just sleeping

Ace: free trial of death, with ads?

——

Jack: Explain to me, Ruggie, where are the vocal cords in the donut?

——

Floyd: i could randomly yell somethin- FUCK THERE WENT MY MEATSTICK

——

Deuce: YOU CANT DEATTACH YOUR BRAIN

Ace: SAYS WHO

Deuce: ME! I SAY SO!

——

Idia: the further down this mountain I go the more alliums I find

Cater: is it candy mountain

Idia: NO

——

My Yuu, Comet: Does this mean I get free tea and foot rubs when I get married? 🥺

Vil: Marry someone who will make you tea and give you foot rubs! If they can’t make you tea and give you foot rubs, that isn’t someone to marry!

Jade, threateningly: Establish it early.

——

Floyd, to Rook: Comment dit’on… ‘gET OFF MY ASS YOU BITCHASS MOTHERFUCKER’

(Comment dit’on is French for “how do you say”)

——

The sheer amount of quotes of Idia and Floyd being said by me is sending me

Anyway hope you enjoy. I still have many… MANY more.

[aita-blorbos]

AITA for trying to save my father?

I (30F) work as a secretary for H (50M), who is currently the president of a colonization company.

Now, this may sound horrible, but I'm not here for that business. I'm his secretary for one reason only: to remind him that I'm his daughter.

When I was a child, he was experimenting with an eldritch computer machine. Something went wrong, and I was sucked into a portal to another dimension. I managed to survive and returned to my original dimension as an adult. However, by the time I saw him again, he didn't recognize me at all.

As it turns out, he had tried using the computer to revive me. Since I was still alive, it was impossible. This, coupled with the computer's impact on his brain, left him a shell of his former self.

I won't deny that my actions in aiding him to mechanize multiple planets might be questionable. Yet, it was necessary for my plan to work, moreover, I believe these planets were wasting their natural resources by not utilizing them. So, I'd like to think we did them a favor.

Everything was going well until we attempted to mechanize a star-shaped planet with abundant nature and clean air. I was excited, and to add to it, I encountered a handsome knight we'll call M (37M). I couldn't resist turning him into a cyborg, so he became our company’s security guard and the upgrades I implanted in him made him so much stronger!

However, there was this kid, K (10NB), who kept breaking into our buildings and destroying our stuff (Rude!). It seemed like they were trying to stop us from mechanizing their planet. When I gently explained how their people were relatively expendable compared to the planet's natural resources, they got mad and attacked me! (Well, more like I provoked the fight, but I know they had a bone to pick with me.)

I tried stopping them by any means, commanding M to attack them, using clones of their arch-nemesis, upgrading and deploying M against them again. Yet, they defeated everything. I got so mad that I was about to attack them myself, but then H intervened and told me to stop, so I complied.

Subsequently, H started fighting K, and predictably, he lost. So, he summoned the eldritch computer. I saw my chance and swiftly took the helmet he used to control it right off his head! I was thrilled at the prospect of selling it and finally reuniting with my father.

… However, the machine had a mind of its own. It zapped me and erased all my father's memories to use him as a vessel. Apparently, it aimed to eliminate us "imperfect, fragile life forms" for the company's eternal prosperity.

I was devastated by this turn of events and could do nothing but give K one of my remaining machines and watch them defeat my father, sealing his fate.

I am now the president of the company, feeling unsure of what to do. I thought I was doing the right thing, but M was so terrified of the mechanizations I did to him that even his evil mirror version fears me.

I'm utterly lost. AITA?

[bbygirl-aemond]

bbygirl-aemond, I have thoughts, I will reread chapter 32, but I do have thoughts if you dont mind me asking them. I think initially, my question is, how do you balance the role of Valyria historically with the nature of their colonialism? Only because it seems like the picture presented is that ultimately Valyrianness is a good thing? It seemed like despite the Firstmen not wanting Valyrian conquerors who desecrated their land with fire, Harrenhal did? And that seems off to me? I mean if your pro-valyrian then totally disregard this but I had got the impression that you were rather critical of them but maybe I was conflating your critique of Viserys with your critique of Valyria and the Valyrian Freehold? Also, side note I very much enjoyed the complex relationship everyone had with Viserys and how it wasn't reconciled and that Helaena stood her ground. Your interpretation of her is my absolute favourite because she is a fully fleshed woman with her own motivations, and her distance from Rhaenyra is that wonderful icing on the cake. Coming from someone who doesn't like my own half-sister, it's very understandable Helaenas weariness but also her stubbornness not to forget what Rhaenyra put her and her brothers through. It's just chefs' kiss.

No that's a fair question! Ultimately, I think my answer is that my opinion on morality of canon is separate from what I choose to play around with for fun. For example, I don't think we're meant to read ASoIaF and come away like "yes monarchy is good actually." I'm very anti-monarchist in my everyday life, but it's tons of fun to lean into the grand imagery related to monarchy and divine right in a fantasy world. This applies to the themes of colonialism and feudalism as well.

Stormbreak is, fundamentally, a Targaryen Restoration fic, so it's not going to be doing any heavy lifting related to concepts of monarchy, feudalism, and colonialism. I do address parts of these themes, but not in full, and it shouldn't be taken as a perfect mirror of my own views outside of the Stormbreak sandbox.

As for Harrenhal--I think there isn't necessarily a moral endorsement of the Valyrian magic there. Just because something exists doesn't mean that it's good that it exists, but it is a reality. Jace's Valyrian-ness is useful in its ability to protect the members of House Strong from a curse that would otherwise kill them off. Jace's arc here also isn't finished, and we haven't seen the final form of the agreement(s) he'll have with the land he rules. This is because the First Men are, you guessed it, also originally colonizers! They invaded Westeros, slaughtered the children of the forest in spades, and destroyed their sacred spaces. They were eventually forced to stop and coexist, but only after a massive display of force (the children of the forest literally broke Westeros and Essos into two separate continents), so it wasn't out of realization that their colonizing was wrong, and they still successfully stole most of Westeros from the children of the forest, relegating them to small patches of land here and there where Weirwood trees grew. I can't spoil too much here, but let's just say the Valyrians weren't the first ones to think of imbuing the land with spells to drive out the First Men… and that Stormbreak will ultimately treat the children of the forest as the only true natives of Westeros.

I'm glad that Helaena's characterization has resonated with you! She's been so fun to write. In general, I've had so much fun with the female characters in this fic, particularly ones like Helaena, Baela, and Alys whose personalities were kind of neglected in the book and/or the show. I also have this pet peeve around the idea that women inherently always have to like each other because of girlboss solidarity, so I deliberately called attention to Rhaenyra's mistake in thinking that Helaena would side with her because they were both women. Helaena isn't necessarily always going to agree with Rhaenyra on things, which is understandable. They had vastly different upbringings, and Helaena's experience with dreaming gives her an entirely unique perspective. In this chapter, Helaena doesn't try to stop Aemond and Aegon, because she agrees with them! Regardless of how much fear she personally felt (since I think her dreams provide a lot of reassurance to her that others aren't able to access), she still spent her entire life surrounded by her family, who were very much impacted by that fear.

[purplecowbell]

Black Mirror: A Boring Twilight Zone

When I tell people I love The Twilight Zone, both the original series and the reboot, the first thing out of their mouths is, “You should check out Black Mirror.” I suppress a cringe, thank them for their recommendation, and then never follow through. I don’t because I’ve already tried it, and I don’t think it compares.

I understand why people keep comparing Black Mirror to The Twilight Zone; it’s certainly a more contemporary perspective on issues (at least if you ignore the more recent reboots like many people seem to do), but the actual core of the shows, how and why they depict their speculative worlds, are very different. I apologize for using an insulting title to the Black Mirror fans, but for someone who’s looking for The Twilight Zone, it just does not scratch the right itch for me.

In The Twilight Zone, the writers cover a wide variety of topics. They explore mob mentality, our perception of aliens, and “the other.” They explore tragic stories of luck and ignorant selfishness, and praise heroic stories with martyrs and rebels. My favorite types of Twilight Zone episodes are ones in which there’s no strong message, just Rod Sterling shows up at the end with, “Well, wasn’t that crazy?” There was one episode (“A World of His Own”) where a playwright had a god-like ability to create people and destroyed his old wife to make a new one, and when Rod Sterling starts to narrate at the end, the author interrupts to destroy Rod Sterling. But The Twilight Zone also isn’t afraid of covering serious issues, whether cynical or optimistic, individual or societal. The show can jump from an episode about the mentality of witch hunts and colonization (“Will the Real Martian Stand Up?”) to one about the value of education against tyrannies and the importance of heroic public acts (“The Obsolete Man”). This wide range of diversity allows The Twilight Zone to cover an entire spectrum of imagination and the human condition, whether silly or profound. When The Twilight Zone comments on societal ills (which Black Mirror is famous for), it pressures you slightly on what was already there and asks, “Do you really want this to get worse?” Black Mirror, on the other hand, crushes you with the framework of structural problems without relent.

Black Mirror focuses on the problems of technology, and a focus is fine; it allows you to really get into the granular details. But unfortunately (for The Twilight Zone fans) the exploration of technology is through a singular cynical lens. Every single story is, without fail, a dystopia, for both those who “deserve” it and those who don’t. Some people have argued that this consistency makes Black Mirror intrinsically better, but I don’t read or watch anthologies for repetition. The characters are less “characters” and more cogs in the machine that happen to be human-shaped. No story satisfyingly breaks from the horrific status quo, and the show usually depicts a snapshot of people that could be happening an infinite number of times in other places of the world. Many times the story ends on just the note: “And then everything continues.” The only episodes that I felt were deviations from this were “The Waldo Moment,” “Nosedive,” and “USS Callister.” These are the only episodes where either the characters felt like they mattered (The Waldo Moment), where the ending showed some upside to deviation from the system (Nosedive) or a combination of the two (USS Callister). The emotional spectrum of the characters ranges from black, to gray, to brown, to artificial-happy-yellow. For a show set in the 21st century, its characters are sometimes more black and white than the Twilight Zone in the 1960s. But that’s not a sin; you’re not supposed to worry about complex characters in the anthology episode format. The lack of complexity does, however, clash with the episode length. Most episodes last around an hour, frequently longer, and watching the same emotional shades in the same episode over and over again without disruption for an hour is like watching paint dry. The problem here isn’t all of what I listed; these are mostly personal preferences that some may enjoy. The problem is that even with these qualities and differences, Black Mirror is still being recommended to Twilight Zone fans.

Just because a work of media is of the same format (speculative anthology) does not mean it satisfies the same itch. If someone watched The Twilight Zone for the dystopian episodes like “The Obsolete Man,” or “It’s a Good Life,” or warnings of technology like “The Lateness of the Hour,” (which is a hilarious episode to take as a serious critique against technology), then the connection between Black Mirror and The Twilight Zone is natural to them. But The Twilight Zone had more episodes than those three. Ask 100 different Twilight Zone fans which episode stands out the most to them, and you’ll probably get 50 different answers (I’m not going to pretend some episodes aren’t more popular than others). Ask 100 Black Mirror fans which episode stands out the most, and they’ll probably say, “The one where a politician has sex with a pig.” Black Mirror has two tools at its disposal: shock value and contemporary despair. I have no interest in being bludgeoned to death with either of these.

I ask that Black Mirror fans try to understand their relationship with the genre. Just because The Twilight Zone and Black Mirror are the most popular shows in said genre does not mean they share additional similarities. I also ask that they understand that Black Mirror is not an objective upgrade from The Twilight Zone just because Black Mirror’s differences are more enjoyable for them. I suggest that fans of both shows watch other series to better understand what would actually be relevant to recommend, instead of just suggesting one show to fans of the other. Shows like American Horror Story, The Outer Limits, Solos, and Love Death & Robots might really scratch an itch you didn’t even know you had.